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Makhaela Jenkins has grown up with the boys around Baltimore, playing football with them for
years on youth-league teams in Fairfield County.

This week, the 12-year-old girl and her family asked the Liberty Union-Thurston school board for
permission to play with the boys on the middle-school team.

In a decision questioned by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and an Ohio High School
Athletic Association official, the school district said no.

The district is standing its ground against charges that it is violating federal law by refusing
to allow the seventh-grader to suit up with the boys.

This week, the school board declined to alter its policy prohibiting girls from participating in
boys’ contact sports after Makhaela and her family appealed.

The ACLU wrote school district officials yesterday to warn that their decision was “unacceptable
and unlawful” since it was based on gender.

“Federal courts in Ohio have made it clear since the 1970s that if a girl wants to play
football, and there is not an equivalent team for girls, she must be allowed to try out for the
boys’ team,” said ACLU lawyer Jennifer Martinez Atzberger.

Makhaela “has the blessing of her family, the support of her coaches and the law on her side.
There is no justification to stop her from playing the sport she loves,” Atzberger said. The girl’s
family could not be reached for comment.

Superintendent Paul Mathews said the school district consulted its lawyers and determined it is
not violating federal laws concerning gender equality.

Both boys and girls have “equal opportunity for participation in sports” at the middle-school,
with football for boys, volleyball for girls and cross country for both.

“Our attorney said it is very clear the school district does have the right to determine whether
girls participate in contact sports,” Mathews said. The federal law, known as Title IX, does allow
girls to be banned from boys’ contact sports.

However, Deborah Moore, associate commissioner of the OHSAA, said it is not that simple.

“I would advise them not to go down that road because it isn’t going to hold up,” she said.

Offering the same number of sports for boys and girls may not fulfill federal law, which also
examines “ overall opportunity” as measured by the number of spots available on teams for each
gender. Boys football, for example, would carry a bigger roster of players than a girls volleyball
team.

The OHSAA encourages schools to allow girls to try out for and play any sport, Moore said. About
60 girls in Ohio participate on boys wrestling teams, and more than 100 play on football teams, she
said.